


The End

by archea2



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Humor, Homage, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 12:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18571039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: The words may change over the years - the song remains the same.(Not a deathfic.)





	The End

It’s an unstable talk. It's a stop-and-go, fits-and-starts dialogue punctuating their hunting life, aka the “ultimate activity holiday” (Dean). From dawn, met open-eyed and tight-jawed, to blind drunk dusk, once Sam cons Dean into a threesome fling with Smokey Joe.

It’s the song that goes on and on, but, unlike Joe, gets better with age.

Whether they are the singers or the theme.

 

* * *

 

 **1.** “C’mon, Sammy, have... have a little heart!” And Dean grimaces over one too many Nebraskan potholes.

“Not. Funny.” 

“Look, man, it doesn’t have to be the end. I mean, I can always haunt Stanford... if you go back... after you and Dad take care of business. Right? Oh, come on, I could do worse. Five brands of cereals at breakfast…”

“Pretty sure ghosts don’t do cereals.”

“...and thirty plus dining options. Buffet options!”

“ _That_ ’s the part of the brochure you memo -”

“Legally blondes on the side!”

“... Guess you didn’t read up on the sodium levels in cereals.”

 

* * *

 

 **2.** “Fuckin’ dyin’ dad and his dyin’ wishhhhh, me killing the two of you with one bone. Stird. Bord. Whatever, I’m not. Hell no. Not I, fuck. Not am,” Dean blurs, still making his point clear.

“Hey, that’s _my_ tequila!”

“Too bad, Stretchy.”

“But I have to drink every time you say " ’m not”. Makes it… easier to bib… bib... bobby… to bib-u-late. Ha!”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m not shooting you. Or if I am, next round’s in me.”

“...”

“...”

“...Huuuuh?”

“Shut up and bib.”

 

* * *

 

 **3.** “He wants a blanket ceasefire for you, Sam. Always did.”

Bobby’s northern drawl coats his words, still a stab. “Dog, house, health and dental,” come next. “Fam’ly of yer own. Flannel longjohns in yer old days.”

Sam laughs, once. “Sorry," he tells the phone. "My what again?”

“Son”, Bobby says, under his down-breath.

Sam moves his eyes to where the motel sheets have slackened their hold on Dean’s hips, letting a trail of freckles point to another golden trail. Dean’s skin, still tender in his leather years and, like his face in sleep, too poignant to look at long. Sometimes, Sam wonders if this was what drove Dad back and forth across the thin line between a hunt and a bender.

Not just Sam’s tainted blood. Dean’s too mortal flesh.

“Let me tell you what it’s gonna be,” Sam says. “I still have that list he gave me. Acacia, oil of Abramelin, the whole kit. And I’m not afraid to use it. Pluck them off their turf, one by one. And I’ll hogtie them, Dean, one way or the other; and then I’ll do it again, and again, and _again_ , one long mural of demons red in eye and scream, but helpless. And if I die trying? Even better. Because I'll take the fight down with me. And I’ll find you, Dean, and then I’ll lay down the rest of Hell on your rack and _gut_ that last laugh out of them.” The phone is hurting his fist, and he thinks, the faraway niche in his mind thinks, he can hear Bobby’s whisper of _Sam_ , but his gaze holds Dean’s, both too bright in the moonglow, and Sam, raucous, says “I’ll end Hell before it ends you”.

(He doesn’t, and it nearly does, but that’s another chapter...

 

* * *

 

 **4.** … that finds him cloistered in darkness, aware that they won’t end up together even if Sam ends Hell’s First Lady.

He has no idea of Purgatory yet, but the sensation of it gathers in him, that one day he'll join his likes wherever they’re shanghaied by God after death - all of the bloodsuckers.

If Sam is tossed among them, if he dies bloody, killing Lilith… there’s still a chance that Dean will find his way back to the old days. Sam blinks hard, and crosses into the nave.)

 

* * *

 

 **5.** Dating Becky is a paradox. A whirlwind ride, cushioned by a layer of sweet domesticity. During their first week together, she insists that Chuck spank her with his author’s copy of _Bedtime Stories_ (“Your downswing was awesome!!”) _and_ lines up his spice rack in alphabetical order.

Chuck does his best to take his new conjugal bliss in stride. It certainly peps up his writing shtick, as Becky proves a zealous cheerleader, beta-reader and copy editor.

An unflagging enthusiast.

And, as Chuck soon discovers, a foe of narrative ellipsis.

“So that’s not what their Heaven would be like?”

“Oh, no. Zachariah messed with them, see? Only, that’s not for me to say, that’s for you to guess. Like Hemingway said - keep the iceberg dignified and all that. ”

“Well, _I_ say you should pitch in. Give us a sneak peek of their real afterlife.”

“Ah, ah, ah, spoilers. You, um, naughty girl.” (His dom voice sucks. He hasn’t told Becky yet, but Chuck’s id is actually more inclined to cast him as the S-end of the equation. So relaxing. So… unexplored by him, as of yet. Still. He wags a finger.)

“Oooooh!” Becky beams, her upper cheeks rosier. “A more-than-bro-life! I _knew_ it!”

“Er -”

“Red silk sheets, for Dean. And mirrors. Wall to wall. Naked soccer trophies, for Sam,  _full_ -size. Feathers? Feathers. I mean, it’s Heaven, there have to be angels moulting for the hornier elect. Beer ice cubes... Impala-shaped dildo?”

“Becky!”

“... and, ooooh! Fruitarian oils for Sam to rub into Dean - win-win Heaven!”

“Beck - ”

“Forever and ever,” Becky rhapsodizes, blissed out by her id. “I’m sure John and Mary won’t mind. Mary kissed Samuel, right?”

“Becky, I don’t think my sponsor -”

“Oh. No, I guess not.” (A doleful sigh.) “Ah, well. We’ll just have to start a Patreon, won’t we?”

 

* * *

 

 **6.** Sometimes, Dean thinks he could live with this Sam.

As in, _live_. The rate they’re going, with Sam a 24/7 death row for monsters, they’ll have cleaned up God’s green earth before either of them hits forty. And then? Dean tries to picture this Sam’s future. A lawyer... nope, he’d ruin the two of them in contempt of court fines. Something less people-savvy, okay? For starters. Porn star, now we’re talking. Except no, talk’s over, because notwithstanding Sam’s stamina levels - which are enough to sustain freakin’ New York through another blackout -, there’s no way Dean will let his little brother earn his bread in the sweat of his… the sweat… the brilliant, golden, musk-distilled sheen covering these rippled…

Or perhaps Dean is hoping that he can teach Sam to look at him the way he did, once upon a lifetime, when he vowed his hunt to Dean. Something shifted that night - something quivered - like the preliminary shudder of a coronary thrombosis. (What? That’s what Dr. Sexy told Nurse Cunningham in today’s episode.)

Even now, whenever Dean feels that phantom pain for Sam-that-was, he catches the shift in this Sam’s eyes. It lasts less than a blink, but if the blink blooms over time… if he, Dean,  can Nanny McPhee Sam into a semblance of soul… then, perhaps, Sam will settle down.

With Dean.

Will age into a… a gardener, yeah. Putting those arms and torso to good, harmless, organic use. Even (that’s a big even) learn to smile at their next-door neighbour pruning his side of the hedge, not snap his shears preemptively at the dude. Perhaps....

“Hello? Oh, hi, Nora. On your break yet? Great, give me a mo. Dean? Dean, I’m off to do the reception clerk. See you in forty minutes, and if you order pizza, get extra chorizo.”

… Perhaps.

 

* * *

 

 **7.** “So get this,” Leviathan 1 says. They’re going the full Stanislavski mile, each scrupulously, if unenthusiastically, parsing his chosen role. “Mine wants to marry his brother.”

Leviathan 2’s jaw drops - _ma non troppo_. He does not want to give the wrong impression.

“Eat me already!”

“I know, right? Not even past first base, and he wants to make this one” - 1 jerks his chin 2-ward - “an honest meal. Something something not let that waffle iron go to waste. Always with the excuses, Dean. And it’s gotta be _Sabbra Cadabra_ for the bridegrooms’ dance. Mosh pit for the rest. Oh, and he wants a méchoui.”

“So redundant. I’d use the pit and halve the costs!”

“Course you would. What about yours?”

Leviathan 2 takes a careful sip of his carrot milkshake and shudders. “Huh, hard to say. Lots of static there.”

“I bet.”

“Oh wait, I just got a 20. _I’m your seven-year itch, buddy. Forget that hand, why not scratch the itch? With that cute little blade?_ … Nope, that’s the third party.”

“They better sort out who’s who before they choose the rings.”

“Right.” With determined resolution, 1 rises and dusts the Twix crumbs from his leather jacket. “Time to put their  _ménage à trois_  in the public eye. Where did you say that bank was?”

 

* * *

  

 **8.** Sam takes up the song a year and a bit later; makes it a chiaroscuro aria.

There’ll be a home, he promises Dean, and the road that leads back to it will be more level. Less of a  helter-skelter, more of a routine. With Hell on lockdown, Heaven will come to let up, leaving only your garden variety monsters to sort through. They’ll work it out. They’ll _delegate_. They’ll save time, Sam says, matching their foreheads firmly together, because they’re the archetypal saviours, all right? and then use the time to explore that steampunk Narnia they’ve been made kings of.

“Camelot,” Dean edits, recalling past bedtime stories.

Camelot, right, They already have a round, well, oval table, and their friends will come and sit there. And Dean will get to see them age, Sam whispers, making the air between their mouths warmer. Dean will hail Kevin’s first Nobel Prize and Jody’s first rodeo as a grandma, will see the first wrinkle on Charlie’s sweet face, a guardian rune, and introduce Cas to Prince’s _2020_. And there’ll be no more fear, Sam quotes to Dean’s lips, but there’ll be pie and jerky for tea, every day the MM. Winchesters are home - and he’ll climb on a chair and dust off that telescope lens himself, for them to stargaze so late at night it will be early morning before they know it.

“Morning,” Dean says, rough-voiced, and kisses him, because why not?  A footnote to the song, that becomes a fleshed-out note, vibrant and physical, and good, like the soft moistness of Sam on Dean’s tongue, the song made a savour.

“Morning,” Sam says later, staring past the top of Dean’s head into that first, whitewashed light, and believing.

 

* * *

 

**9.**

Look, you promised.

  


You promised me a life, Sam, with you in it, Sam, you had me hooked, lined and sinkered on _tunnel, meet light_ , and don’t try to bullshit me with some Near-Death Experience. Fuck, Sam - there was a church! And a handfasting! What more did you want, a three-tiered cake? Man, I hate frosting.

  


You can’t expect me to be a saint! You can’t expect me to take you at your word, and then give you for lost!

  
  
  
  


… Yeah, I can see you’re livid.

  


You think I didn’t know the price for tricking your endgame? You think I forgot Endicott, Meg, frickin’ _Lucifer_ \- you think I don’t wonder, at times, if you let me in precisely because I’m the least of a stranger?

  


But that’s just it, Sam. Every time you die, what I see is the scariest scarecrow of all riding my boy. And I can’t. I don’t give a shit about Heaven. I don’t care if it’s real or an angels’ peep show, But I’ve looked Death in the eye twice now, Sammy, and there’s _nothing_ there. Jack with a dark side of squat. It fucking terrified me.

  


I’m not risking him be the end of you. I’m not. How could I?

| 

Not just the betrayal.

  


Not just you pimping me to Gadreel, making him privy to what was mine only, stored against the rainy days to console me in health or sickness. _Mine_ , your oniony kiss, _mine_ , the day you made good on your little sales pitch after we ganked Vesta - that field on the outskirt of Sioux Falls, remember? How the open grass made you sneeze while you touched me everywhere, only he was already part of _where_ \- only he took your touch and gauged it coldly, and then he used it, Dean, to lie about that body you’d made over to him and make _you_ his bitch by proxy.

  


 

 

But it’s not why I’m livid.

  


Did you ever think - did you ever consider, all the time you kept this from me, that you might have died first? Paving the way for Gadreel to hold me forever? You’d be with Mom in Heaven, Dean, binging on her toast and hugs. And I’d be caged again. Stuck down below, again. Two everlastings, and never the twain shall meet. Kil myself? Nah. He’d haul me back. Or they’d peg it as self-slaughter above, and slam the pearly gates to my face.

  


How could you take this risk, Dean?

  


 

 

 

 

How could you do this to us?  
  
---|---  
  
 

* * *

   
 **10.** _ACT TWO, SCENE NINE (first draft)_

_The USS Impala. Night. The Space Leprechauns are firing from every angle._

_SAM (over the laser staccato): Dean! They’re going for the sun - the ultimate gold coin!_

_FEM!DEAN walks down the bridge, Dean’s bowlegged stride more of a sashay now._

_DEAN: I got this, little brother. (Crosses over to the intercom.) Hey! You Oirish motherfu_

“Marie…”

“Too R-rated?”

“That, and Siobhan might object to Oirish.”

_Hey! Li’l green men! You call that a chase? I’ve seen better efforts from the scrap droids in my uncle Bobby’s yard!_

_(One of the firing bolts hits close enough that the Impala lurches sideway.)_

_SAM: Really, Dean? You_ _do_ _realize our delta-sensitive astroblasts have been disabled by now, so unless we reverse polarity, or spin close enough for Cas to ionize their thermocapacitor, the odds for a zero-sum gravitational pull are less than good - to say nothing of the neutrino gigashower._

“Marie, hold on. Like, geek Sam is canon, but Maggie’s got to breathe at some point.”

“If she can make it through _Let It Go_ without breathing, she’ll live.”

_DEAN: Sammy, Sammy. Look starboard. What do you see?_

_(A beautiful violet light pours from CEILING onto the stage.)_

_SAM: The ultra-ultra-purple portal! Oh, Dean, we made it!_

_(The ~~brothers~~ siblings trade a soulful look. Then…) _

_DEAN (via the intercom): You still here, Pointytoes? Three, two, one, zero - time to fly over the rainbow!_

_(We hear shrieks of protest as the Leprechaun fleet is pulled forcefully into the portal.)_

_SAM: Iron shields, check. Salt blasters, ditto. Holo-holy-grams, all set. But… Dean…_

_DEAN: I know what you’re gonna say. No, Sam. Wishes, deals, same difference._

_SAM: You sure? I mean, as a man of ethos, I approve. But. It also means you stay a chick for the rest of your days._

_DEAN: I’m good with who I am. Er. That is. If you…_

_(He takes a step closer.)_

_SAM (with maximum soulfulness): Oh yeah._

“Not ‘I got your rack, man’?”

“Please. My Sam is a gentleman.”

_The music swells. Sam and Dean turn to stand at the bay window, united, looking the future staunchly in the eye._

_CURTAIN_

 

* * *

 

 **11.** The future…

The Oak Park brochure lies in Sam’s treasure trove, a soft-hued keepsake, the first to incite a look forward, not over time’s shoulder. That night, Sam dreams of retirement.

It does not have to be all autumn chic and gas-lit faux chimney, his dream argues. It could be… it could be a kindness. It could be the chance Henry never had, John never had, the warmth of returning - to a human community, and let it enfold you again.

In his dream, he sees other humans, their faces etched with a life’s legacy, wink at them as they take it - finally, _blessedly_ \- slow. A daily amble round the blue-grey O of a lake. There’s smoke in the air, but the scent is all leaves. There’s a limp to their progress, but the walking stick in Dean’s other hand is as straight-backed and stubborn as the man whose grip owns it. Texan oak - one of their few belongings - cut and carved by Dean on their eve of departure.

“Any update on Alpha Bravo Charlie?”

They left the bunker in younger hands, Sam thinks, the autumn haze blurring a few corners of the dream. Left them to take up Sam’s nerd mantle and the Charlie Database, a hunters’ digital library branching out into Borges-like twists and loops; Sam’s penance quest, doubling as a caveat for the latter-day monsters; and finally, a new, less monkish lease for the Men of Letters’ annals. There _was_ a beauty to the old books and their faded glaze of gold on calf; to the vintage Remington font of the stacked reports, and their onionskin pages, The brave grace of all things paper. But there was a pride, too, that had to be left behind.

“You upstanding democrat, you,” Dean chuckles.

They stop to let their breaths catch up with each other, and observe the haze shot with mid-afternoon sun. Soon, they’ll turn back to their cozy rooms. Dean will read to Sam, a childhood rite resurfacing at the other end of the cycle. Later, if they feel like it, they’ll find a poker table, no con attached. Or - wait for it -  bingo. (Dean has proved a bingo menace, with a knack for bawdy-ing the blandest number call). Or they’ll stroll down to the lakeside café with Creole food, that Dean has learnt to take with a grain of caution, and the hearty twang of country music.

“Thought I might learn the guitar,” Dean says, propped on his elbow across the table, and Sam’s heart jolts, scalded with love.

“Come to my room tonight”, he answers, kindling a riplet in Dean’s eyebrow.

Nobody said retirement had to be _sedate_.

 

* * *

 

 **12.** “Hey,” Sam says gently.

The stare from Cas’s eyes is positively owlish, if owls agreed to trade their serious gold for serious cobalt. Seriously silent, too. It’s okay - Sam’s a dab hand at conversational gambits.

“So. Did I ever tell you about _Our Town_?”

“Lawrence? Why would you... Oh. You mean the play.”

“Yeah. We, uh, did it when I was a kid. I was the Stage Manager. Normally, it should have been our drama teacher, only he couldn’t fault me on memory and every tongue-twister he threw at me, I aced. All that Latinating paying off, huh?  Anyway, I had that long monologue in act III, that goes on and on about how the dead wait for _the eternal part in them to clear up_ , but to do so, they have to give up on family. Stop feeling they’re _one of them_.” Sam crooks his fingers around the quotes. “It’s kind of the morale of the play.”

“Your father must have been delighted.”

“Oh, he didn’t come. At the time, I took it as another pep talk. You know - don’t depend on others, live it all, be a light unto yourself. Acted on it, too. But now… I can take eternal rest, Cas, in fact I crave it at times. I can take Billie’s dark Avalon. But if I do, I want my brother asleep in my arms. Thigh to thigh, lip to lip. And I want my peace so tangled in his that nothing, not even centuries of oblivion, can tell them apart. Those are my terms.”

“Billie....”

“We were going to volunteer both. Double or quits.”

“... I think I still prefer my denouement, Sam.”

Sam’s laugh lasts long enough for the owl-brand gaze to clear up a little. “No rest for the virtuous, then. Okay, let’s put that to the test - come down and help me un-grouch Dean.”

 

* * *

 

 **13.** The words are a sunlit thread in a tapestry of hope, hopelessness and confusion, woven far down below as Chuck and Amara listen, soul in soul.

_Toes in the sand, couple of them little umbrella drinks. Matching Hawaiian shirts, obviously. Some hula girls._

“Hula girls? Hula girls?! _That_ ’s his happy ending?”

Chuck pauses to re-right the Milky Way. “Nah. Only his little joke.”

“Oh…”

“Human wit - not my best shot. I’d fallen behind, polishing their little frowns. Still think I should have gone for that forty-fourth muscle, in symmetry lies beauty, all that. Which reminds me - did I tell you about my new project? The eleven-act space opera based on the mosquito’s life cycle?”

“No, but - brother, will it come to pass?”

“Well, knowing the Broadway bigwigs...”

“ _Brother_.”

Chuck sighs; counter-sighs, before he has struck the Sun and Moon Pyramids off the record, and gently chides his sister. “You know I cannot say.”

“No, but we can have a peep. In all the planes of all possible timesworlds, there has to be one…” And Amara stretches winningly, volute after volute of velutidinous black, to coax Chuck into a visual. Chuck is her all, as she is his, but Dean has remained something of a protégé.

And so the quantum states of all possible worlds are browsed in the next tick, before - tock! - the Hawai sands come in view, lazy and sunfreckled. They lie all day long, an open book; while boy and puppy, man and man, man and woman, bird and wind and girls and kelp and boat’s keel fill their pages with a chance grace, their small prints mirrored and cross-referenced as the scriptors move about one another, and, at the water’s fringe, a grey-haired man squats on his heels to add his own sigils.

“Sammy!,” the man yells, his speech slightly slurred. “Got it!”

He tosses the ironwood aside twig, as a long shadow covers the drawings.

“The mimosa muse strikes again?” And Sam laughs, kneeling next to him. A red ball crosses into his vision field, but before it has smudged Dean’s opus, quick-gestured Dean has caught and tossed it back.

“So, remember what you said - that players need to exit the Djinn’s Nadir to access a level-2 hunt? Only the Djinn’s Arc is tied in with the Tattoo Parlour, and that’s a level-3 locus.  Now look. Say we throw in two Tall Tales to be out-tricked… here… and the reward can be cashed in Idjits’ Digits… there… then _that_ gives the hunter enough status to enter the Parlour! Ta-da!”

He beams up into Sam’s face -  tan and silver, and lit up by Dean’s own excitement - and touches his shoulder free gratis, no death drill attached. Something of their joy reaches out to the outer plane and its galactic voyeurs - their baffled faith, that this is it, this is theirs, finally - a world where the supernatural is all play and hardly any work, making Jack...

“Where’s the kid? We should run this by him. Edlund’s heir, family estate and all that.”

“The kid,” Sam laughs,” is teaching _his_ kid how to swim. You know he’s turning thirty-three next year, right?”

But already their voices are fading, their plane lost in a layered millefeuille of human odds and ends, and Chuck is telling Amara, “Now, the truly epic thing about the mosquito…”

 

* * *

 

 **14.** Dean kisses his neck, the riot of his shoulder muscles, his glistening back. Sam didn’t lie to his mom - they don’t do hugs, never have. Hugs are for vertical Winchesters - Winchesters erect and poised, usually on the brink of their next catastrophic step. No: when they need consolation, they clamber into one’s or the other’s bed and become horizontal brothers - _thigh to thigh, lip to lip,_ Sam said another life ago, ttheir bodies slipping so naturally into each other’s gaps and volumes that a hug would feel like an unnecessary third.

“I think he knew,” Dean whispers, his mouth to the runnel of Sam’s back. It fits there, like it’s always fitted, the long downglide of Dean’s kisses pointing to a lower, deeper pleasure. 

“...Dad?” Sam whispers back.

“Huh-uh. Said he wanted me to have - what he had.” Dean lets his mouth linger between Sam’s _other_ dimples - those barely-there, sweet little indentations that Dean always thought was a chick thing, until Sam turned seventeen and Dean joked “Bitch, your back’s smiling at me”, and suddenly the very axis between Dean’s heart and dick was thrown off kilter. “Told him I did. Have it.”

“Oh god, Dean…”

“Had to,” Dean says, kissing Sam’s sacral - sacred - left dimple. “And guess what? He smiled.”

“He - asked for my forgiveness,” Sam says, and it should feel sacrilegious, that Dad talk mid-bed, but it doesn’t. Somehow, it’s being woven to the healing touch of Sam’s flesh, Sam’s pure, one hundred per cent Sam-ness, keeping Michael’s demented cries at bay. When they touch, Dean is spoken for. When they speak touching, their bond scales up, filling every possible. “Told him I was good, _we_ were good. Dean, tonight…”

Sam’s voice is grit and hope, like always, and Dean craves it. Pushes himself up and along the strong plane of Sam’s back just as Sam is turning over to receive him.

“Yeah,” Dean says, mostly grit, but accepting Sam’s hope.

“Who knew, who could tell, we’d have this - Mom and Dad our guests, breaking bread with us, and you and me, across that table, hosting them. It was a first, Dean. And you know what’s great with firsts? What’s so beautiful? _They can be repeated_.”

“Sam…”

“Maybe not now. Or anytime soon. But I know what our Heaven’s gonna be, Dean.”

“What, a family incestuous villa?” But Dean is laughing, just a little, his mouth made tender by the night.

“Just - this. Food. One-for-all roof. Family by any other name. Yours and  Dad’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad jokes…”

“Shut up, Chuckles. You love my terrible jokes.”

“... and it could be a log cabin in the woods, with gentle winters and a dog, or it could be a motel room with a stoked-up minibar and our names on it, or, knowing you, a campfire sing-along. But whatever it is, there’ll be a door to their Heaven, and, Dean, I promise, no Zachariah attached.”

“Amen to that.” Dean offers his mouth, sucks in the touch. “Can we drop the Z-word now? Class A damper, man.”

Sam laughs and turns the other cheek, but his words endure. Linger on, even after Mom’s gone - again - and the road is back to their customary valley of darkness. They stay on, and they tell Dean - yelling if they must - that their end doesn’t have to be a nil balance between rage and loss.

That one day, perhaps…

 

* * *

 

 **15.** It’s so simple, really. Not the last step, but the one before.

So familiar, like the hard warm curve of Baby’s trunk hello-ing his palm.

(Sam’s palm, too, solidly warm in his other hand.)

“Ready?”

No more fear. Only the peace of letting go (of doubt, and doubt’s anger) and the life-size certainty that Sam’s last stand will keep him in Dean’s orbit, come what may. Now and ever.

Dean breathes once - sky, metal and Sam’s faithful peppermint cologne - and closes the trunk.

“There she goes, under the sun.”

 

THE END

 

**Author's Note:**

> End quote ("There she goes/Under the sun") courtesy of Beach House, "The Last Ride".


End file.
